The quest of man to capture "natural color" in every form of graphic communications has brought about significant technological advancements during the the past three decades. Perfection of "Technicolor" brought a boon to the motion picture industry. The significant break-through in the field of television transmission, via full color, not only stabilized the growth of this giant young industry, but filled the insatiable appetite of the consumer to obtain maximum enjoyment from the "home entertainment center."
The printing, publishing and photographic industries have likewise expended millions of dollars in machinery, equipment and technique in an effort to maintain its market position as required by the consumers' ever-growing demand for high quality reproduction of "natural color".
Consumer products manufacturers, through the advertising community, via all media of communications, continue to pressure publishers toward perfection of reproduction techniques in order to capitalize on the "emotional appeals" so essential to motivating consumers to product introduction and sales growth.
The purpose of this brief explanation is to describe an advanced technique, including perfected equipment in the field of film preparation, as it pertains to the photographic and lithographic reproduction industries with application to related industries. The resultant effect is the ability to offer superior color reproduction at minimized production costs indigenous to consumer demand and reward in vast industry expansion.
To equate and evaluate this advanced technique and equipment, a brief explanation of presently employed processes is essential. All present methods and techniques require an original "Transparency" or "Ectachrome". This is accomplished generally by a professional photographer using standard camera equipment and color film. The majority of commercial photographers use the services of film processing companies for development and finishing their exposed color film. Vary often the elapsed time factor for such processing will be from 3 days to 3 weeks. The average price range of such transparencies will be from $35.00 to $300.00, depending upon size, quantity and degree of labor, i.e. distant location, studio equipment, models, etc. required.
It is not the purpose of this explanation to evaluate or judge the quality of transparencies. Mention is made only to explain the necessity of transparencies in the present method of film preparation for reproduction, but more importantly, to emphasize that with the techniques of this invention (as detailed later), the requirement of the original transparency is completely eliminated. The system does not, obviously, eliminate the photographic studio, models, props, etc., but when employed by the studio photographer, it does eliminate the use of color film. Of equal importance to the photographic and lithographic community is the knowledge that the new technique and equipment have the ability and flexibility to prepare film for reproduction from an original transparency with equal qualitative results without modification of equipment or system.